


Range Day

by Defnotmeyo



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-06-26 09:02:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15660036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defnotmeyo/pseuds/Defnotmeyo
Summary: Days at the firing range for Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.This is inspired by the fantastic msrpolaroidproject drawing done here: https://msrpolaroidproject.tumblr.com/post/176798192691





	1. Initial Qualification

It’s her first range test in front of a supervisory special agent. 

‘Mulder,’ her brain supplies, ‘It’s just Mulder.' 

But seven cases in, trading the duties of saving each other’s lives once already in her young career, Mulder isn’t just anything. And he’s insisted on being there when she had to recertify. 

“Scully, we’re partners. You have to recertify before we fly north. And I need to know which way to duck if we end up in a shack in Alaska pointing guns at each other.”

She’d rolled her eyes and shoved passed him, but the reality of their next case hung in the air and she needed to knock this range session out of the park. 

“Range is hot!” the range master calls as she slaps in a magazine and racks the slide to chamber a round. “Strong hand, unsupported, 3 yards, 3 seconds, from the holster.”

Her focus squeezes down to the Q in front of her and she huffs a breath; starts her inner mantra before the weapon is even in her hand: “Front sight, front sight, front sight,” she chants to herself and the whistle calls out for the first drill to begin. 

Draw, sight up, eye-level. Depress trigger. Depress, depress. The brass ejects. 

There is only one hole on the target, made slightly larger than a normal bullet hole. Perfect grouping. Through her earmuffs she hears Mulder’s voice, muffled. 

“Jesus Christ.”

Her lips quirk in a smile. Bolstered. 

“Round 2, 6 rounds, 8 seconds. 3 strong hand, unsupported. 3 rounds weak hand. Unsupported. 3… 2…”

As per usual, Scully scores expert. 

As per usual, Mulder is right. During the next case, they aim their weapons at each other's chests.


	2. Re-certify

He’s boisterous. Joyful, even. He thanks Jack, the coffee guy, and gives him a five dollar tip. Jack stares after him in confusion.

Mulder’s finally got enough of a break in his schedule and it happens to come when Scully is re-certifying at the range. 

She had de-certified during her abduction but she’s back, the X-Files are back, and they have a case, and he wants to run around to every person and Labrador-like, lick their face and bark out, “It’s range day, it’s range day!” 

He’s in her face on the way down, “Gonna just knock out expert again, Scully? Shoot 60 of 60? Make the range master want to fuck your brains out?”

She cuts him a hard look at that one and his eagerness deflates instantly. 

Fuck. Before her abduction he treated her just like one of the guys. Just like anyone else. And now, in an attempt to return to status quo, he is trying to do the same. 

But he’s seen her face when she catches her reflection. Months in zero gravity somehow managed to eliminate some of her muscle-mass and pack on a few pounds. And… well if he was forced to admit it, he does treat her differently. 

More solicitous. And the way she probably sees it, like she’s somehow come back less than. Weaker.

Mulder is a world class profiler and psychologist. He knows his partner is confident. But also knows she notices her body came back from hyperspace different than it arrived. Notices that she came back different. 

Mulder can read the whys of how she feels, but he can’t figure out how to get his partner back. Still, he feels like an ass and so, deflated, he watches as she blows through the range, just like old times. 

The knot in his stomach starts to loosen as she knocks off drill after drill. He can see her confidence return. Each depression of the trigger, ejection of brass, as always she is dead on. Right-handed, left-handed, barricade shots, and every round is landing center-mass. 

For the first time in a long time, he feels like he can regulate. Like they can. Like they can finally get back to status quo.

Except not. Because in the last stage of fire, as she drops to prone, her blouse slips and out of the corner of his eye, he sees the smooth milk-white curve of her breast and he’s instantly hard, turning and coughing and trying to tuck his dick into his waistband as covertly as possible. 

It’s embarrassing, and it’s at that moment in his life Fox Mulder realizes he is very, very much in trouble.


	3. Overcoming the Tremor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder has to overcome some demons.

He’s at the gun club by his apartment. It’s expensive, white-bred, and you’d never know by walking passed it that inside were about ten “regulars” that spent more money than necessary on 5.56 NATO rounds. 

The regulars tolerate Mulder, but they’re not necessarily fans. They respect law enforcement but when they speak of L.E., they’re speaking of the Metropolitan Police and the fire departments and the infantrymen getting swiss-cheesed in Afghanistan, and they are certainly never speaking of the Feds.

With a capital F.

Mulder’s always felt just the slightest bit of unease shooting here, but the range was the toughest part of the academy for him (that and EVOC; Scully is always busting his ass at his ‘grandma tendencies’ behind the wheel) and living next to the gun club gave him a convenient place to hone up.

So, on this particular day, he does as he usually does about a week before his bi-annual recertification. He forgoes his morning coffee, drinks OJ instead, and goes for an exhaustive run designed to pump every last bit of adrenaline out of his body and to prevent ‘the shakes’. When he gets home, he takes the hottest shower he can stand, towel dries his hair until he roughly resembles either a baby duck or a hedgehog because the earmuffs are gonna fuck up pomade anyway, and heads to the range.

He always shoots the course of fire twice here, by himself, before he actually does it to qualify in front of other people. He snags three strips of chewing gum and, ignoring the side-eyes of the men around him with their SCARs and their ARs, slaps on his earmuffs, eye-pro, and steps up to the line.

Decides to fire off a slow ten rounds to warm-up before diving into a simulation of the range test.

Breath in, breath out, draw.

The voice is back in his head the instant the gun is in his hands.

Shoot the little spy!

Fuck; he’s pulling back on the trigger, nice and slow, and he notices the tremor. Mulder stops to take a second, pulling the weapon back to a low ready-gun position. Takes a deep breath and ignoring the sweat beginning to bead and roll off his forehead, he draws down. 

C’mon, Mulder, he thinks. Just fire off a round.

Mulder, no. Mulder, yes.

He squeezes down on the trigger again, pulling back. Three pounds of pressure, four… fuck. The shake is so bad that when he finally fires, it throws his round completely off the paper, not even coming close to target. He benches his weapon for a second wiping off his palms and then moves to shoot again, ignoring the side-glances from the men around him. 

Mulder, fight him. You can fight this.

Four pounds of pressure. The tremor in his hand starts back up again and, in his head, he’s thinking “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me I can’t do this.” 4.5 pounds of pressure.

Mulder, fight him. You can fight this.

Mulder breathes, closes his eyes. The Smith and Wesson 5906 needs 5.4 pounds of pressure on the trigger before it fires. An agent gets roughly two seconds to fire, but two seconds to get off a shot can feel like an eternity, particularly when most gunfights are over in half that time.

Mulder knows this from experience. Multiple experiences.

A bead of sweat drops off his brow. 5.4 pounds between him and her death. Between recertifying on the range. Between being able to protect his partner. Between getting over the serpent in his head named good ol’ Bob Modell or getting her killed.

You can fight this.

He opens his eyes and pulls, absorbs the recoil, pulls again, eight more times.

The target is drilled through, center mass. It looks like a 5.56 tore through it instead of eight .40 caliber pistol rounds.

He finishes out, practice-shooting the course of fire. As he holsters and walks out, the range-master claps him on the shoulder. “Damn Spooky, I thought I was gonna need to pull you off the line at first but that’s the best shooting I’ve seen you done since… well. Ever.”

Mulder shrugs him off.

He’s going to do it. He’s going to find his sister. He’s going to tear every man involved in her disappearance limb from limb. And then, he’s going to find every man that ever thought about hurting his partner. And he’s going to put a bullet in them, too. Twice if he has to.

And that includes good ol’ Bob Modell.


	4. Chemo and Gunsmoke

She really just wants to feel normal, and to remember everything important to her before she’s so damn sick she forgets it. 

As such, she’s been doing this thing. This thing she’s told no one about. 

Scully has started to go to places that remind her of her loved ones, but she goes alone. In that way, she’s comfortable not being a burden, not being something someone has to care for and protect. But at the same time, she can remember. 

Can love and feel loved. 

Without making anyone else feel like shit. 

She visits the little bagel shop she routinely hits with her mother for Saturday brunch. Thinks of her Mom laughing and teasing her about her choice of light cream cheese. “I have to stay in weight standards.” “Dana, Fox could care less if you were 105 or 205, that man will love you ‘til you die.” “Mom!”

She drives down to the boat ramp in Gloucester and snorts when a young buck in a Ford has to reverse and pull his trailored center-console 10 times before being able to line it up and dump it on the water. Thinks of Bill doing the same thing in their father’s old Silverado, “Stop laughin’ then, and you dump the damn boat, Dana.” He taught her how to drive stick-shift that day. 

And she visits the National Symphony, falling back in love with Shostakovitch and Holst. “Baroque is so boring, Danes. The Late Romantic is where it’s at.” Charlie’s chosen instrument had been the cello, and as the section picks up the swell of chorus in “Jupiter” she finally gets it. Dana wishes she’d gotten it earlier. Before her younger brother fell for an attractive male viola player and before her family told him to figure it out before he came home again. 

The one place she doesnt visit is Melissa’s grave. She’ll be next to her, soon enough, and besides, the dead have different tales to tell. 

But she has begun to do something else. She’d been on her way over to his place with an evidence custody receipt a year ago, when she’d spotted Mulder headed into his little gun club. Curious, she’d followed him in and signed on the membership dotted line, rolling her eyes at the obvious lechery of the man at the front counter. 

She’d been behind the glass in the brief-and-viewing room. Had seen him get the yips after the Model case. And figured out he went there four times a year to Figure It Out before qualifying. 

It was well known in their partnership: Mulder kicked in doors and Scully dispatched bullets. 

So, knowing she has to re-certify, and feeling like shit they way she now does, she drags her ass to his range, just to make sure she can. That she is able. To re-certify, that is.

She’s sick as hell to her stomach and the smell of gunpowder makes her want to hurl after chemo. 

She lines up on range and draws. Five shots off and she’s fine, center mass, but she flashes to Harold Speuller and her next shot flies off the paper. 

God dammit.

She tries to line up the next shot and finds her partner’s tremor echoing in her own hands. Shit. The yips. And the acrid smell of gunsmoke curling into her nose doesn’t help matters. 

She benches her weapon, and in complete violation of range rules, bolts from the room leaving the pistol unattended. Lands on her knees in front of the women’s toilet in the dismal excuse of a female restroom. Coughs and then pukes. 

He’s in and behind her in a second and she can’t even be surprised he’s there. 

They know each other. Fully. 

“Shhh, ’s'alright, Scully. S'alright baby, just… just get it up.”

Under no circumstance is she okay with being called baby. But here, once her stomach quiets and he hauls her up in his lap, back to chest and them both resting against the closed stall of a shitty restroom in a shitty place in D.C…   
In this stall, with her fingernails cracked by racking the slide of her Sig, here it suddenly seems okay.

Here. She confesses the truth.

“I don’t wanna die, Mulder.”

“Shhh,” he sighs against her. Digs his cheek into the part of her hair. “You’re not gonna die.”

“I am,” she insists. “When it comes, you need to shoot me. Put me down. End it.” The last thing she wants is to go quietly. And he’s the only person she can trust to fulfill her wishes. She refuses to die like an old campfire, tubes awry and shoved down her throat and everywhere else.

“Scully, no.”

“I can’t go out like that, Mulder. Like I’ve seen the other women go. You have to do it. You’re the only one.”

The sounds of the range echo around them, right there on the floor, the toilet in front of them. 

The sharp pop of bullets. The snick of recoil and rechamber. The slip of the magazine. The echo of brass. And the acrid smell of gunsmoke.

“I can’t, Scully,” and he’s close to tears. She can hear it. "I couldn’t put a bullet in you anymore than I could myself.“

A week later he proves himself and her wrong and, with holes drilled in his head, almost kills them both.


	5. Emily

Scully is wary on the drive out, following the vague directions written in Mulder’s familiar and quirky chicken scratch. She is even more uneasy because he’s not answering his phone. And frankly, she’s exhausted by this cloak and dagger shit.

Exhausted by life. By her most recent Christmas (as she’s chosen to label the gaping hole in her life known as Emily), by the New Spartans and her partner’s intolerance of her faith and frankly, she could use a weekend. 

Just one. 

Scully doesn’t ask him for much. But this one weekend, with him fresh out of the psychiatric ward, she asks to just be left alone. She had chosen to ignore his kicked-puppy routine. And she thought she’d been successful until she found the note slipped under her apartment door later that evening. 

“Scully, I know this isn’t how you want to spend a Sunday, but if you can make time for it, I’d very much appreciate you getting here, directions below, at 1000. If not, I won’t hold it against you . It’s not official FBI biz. But… I’d like to have you there.”

The word like had been erased and rewritten and if she were so inclined, she’d think he originally had penciled in the word love, but Mulder and she have been very… off… since her remission and so she is one hundred percent disinclined. 

She’s quickly growing more frustrated in her car as the directions loop her out into the Virginia countryside and off the highway onto a frontage road. It feels like a set-up and suddenly, she’s very, very alert that she never confirmed if it was actually Mulder that had slipped her the note. She turns down the last road on the directions, where gravel transitions to dirt and curses herself. 

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid. She reaches for her cell as she continues a slow crawl in the vehicle and sees there is absolutely no signal. 

“Shit.”

She finally spots his Jeep at the end of the road in a small clearing, and her knot of apprehension loosens just a little. With Mulder you never know. But at the very least, odds are he wrote the note.

She parks and steps out, wary nonetheless and with her holster unsnapped. 

“Mulder?” She curves around his Jeep and damn near jumps out of her skin when hands cover her eyes and a guy significantly larger than her presses her against the car. 

“Bang!” He shouts and she elbows him hard enough to earn a grunt but not a release, and she tries to relax. “Guess who?” He murmurs down by her ear and she can hear the smile in his voice. 

As she wills heart rate to slow, Scully tries incredibly hard to not be instantly pissed off at him. “Jesus, Mulder!”

He lets her go but only moves about a step and a half back as she spins to face him, six feet of sweaty hair and lazy grin and fucking sleepy eyes and his white undershirt is tight across all the right areas. Her anger evaporates and in that moment, Scully well and truly wants to hate him. 

“You know I’m packing. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

“Eh,” he shrugs, “last week you were taking down a man-sized cockroach for me. I figured you’d recognize your one in five billion.”

She rolls her eyes and smiles despite herself, glancing off to the side. “I thought that was the other way around, Mulder.”

Scully sees his smile finally light up his eyes, visibly sees him heartened, and curses herself. 

This man who so few are kind to. 

She can be a bitch. 

“So what are we doing out here, Mulder? Secret informants? Man-eating worms patrolling the Virgina countryside these days? A ghost sighting?”

He taps his finger on his lips, pretending to ponder and Scully realizes she’s missed this. Missed her friend. 

“It’s too early in the day for ghosts and ghouls, Scully. Besides. I have something more fun. I brought entertainment.” He cocks his head, motioning for her to follow him back around to the rear of his vehicle and then pops the trunk.

And she practically squeals in delight. Wants to throw her arms around him. She’d climb him like a tree if she could.

In his truck, Mulder has a short-stock pump action 12 gauge, an M4 Carbine, a Colt .357, and a metric shitload of ammunition. Plus four twenty-four packs of empty Shiner Bock bottles and a twelve-pack of full ones. A few watermelons and a hefty dose of sad looking mangoes. And interestingly sitting atop the Cherokee’s folded down back seats… A worn, plush armchair. 

Mulder twists the tops off two of the beers and hands one to her.

“Mulder…” She accepts the beer and takes a quick swig. “Where on earth did you round all this up?”

He shrugs again. “Let’s just say one of the guys at the armory owes me. Big time. The empties? A few Sunday sessions with the Boys. And the produce? 

Well…” he scuffs his tennis shoe over the rocks and she’s struck. 

Six feet of sweat and hair and muscle and heart packed into ugly stonewashed jeans and Nikes and a thinning and stained white v-neck and God dammit. Her partner really is adorable. 

“Well… there’s a cute little farmers market down the street from your place and at the end of the day everything else is cheap as hell.” He grins her way, head tilted down, and dammit if he doesn’t have that same innocence Eddie Van Blundht embodied when he adopted Mulder’s face. Except there’s a confidence to him, a certain look, and he smelled exactly the way he should. 

Sweat and a little bit of gunpowder and sunflower seeds. 

Scully sighs, smiles, gives him an indulgent raised eyebrow, and clinks her beer against his in a cheers. “Nice job, Spooky. This is gonna be fun.”

An hour down and four and a half beers between them and it’s fun as hell.  
Scully had forgotten just how entertaining it could be to blow shit up.   
The mangos are the first to go, they decide, and Scully clears the M4 then rigs a magazine and slaps back the bolt, her toes curling at the satisfying snick of a chambered round. 

“Starting off hot, huh partner?” 

She tosses him a sly smile. “C'mon Mulder. I haven’t fired an M4 since we busted that group in New York.” 

Krycek’s group. But here, on the countryside, she refuses to let their demons haunt them. 

She’s going to make this become a safe space, Scully decides, and so she swiftly moves Mulder on. “You gonna toss that mango, or what?”

Toss, pull, crack, and the fruit explodes. By the time fifteen old mangos and fifteen long empty beer bottles have been sacrificed, Scully is laughing hard as her partner continues to try and throw her off, tossing errant targets. 

She goes thirty for thirty and hands him the rifle, stock first, and with a recharged magazine. 

Toss, pull, crack, and Scully snickers when four of the fifteen empty bottles she lobs his way crash to the ground unwounded until impact, and three mangoes live until the next round. 

They trade a few rounds with the Colt and this time, Mulder is a better shot than her because it’s a huge weapon with a kick like a mule and her wrist is starting to bark. She wins in the end though, when trying to trip her up and knowing she only has one round left in the revolver, Mulder pulls two bottles, drains his own beer and tosses it as a third. 

Effortless, she sends a .357 cartridge through the first empty Shiner, dumps the revolver and pulls her Sig. Three for three. She wins again. 

Many quashed fruit and bottles later, one thing remains clear. Mulder isn’t a bad shot, but Scully is their expert. And even she can tell by the end of their “range” session, he’s fairly charmed. Mulder doesn’t have dimples per se, but he’s got very deep and telling laugh lines when he’s really and truly amused and right now he’s focused fully on her. 

Scully gets tripped up in those laugh lines. That line of scruff across his jaw. And dammit. He’s starting to go gray. Just there at his chin. 

They’ve been so, so off this year. So just… not them. And he did this for her. For them. 

She’s moved. Beyond moved. She sighs and bumps him with her shoulder, finally breaking their gaze. "Thanks, Mulder,“ she mumbles, looking at the dirt around her boot. "This was um… This was fun. We,” she adds the word hesitantly… maybe the way he hesitantly wrote love like on his note requesting her presence… And like him, she erases the sentiment. “I needed this.”

He seems to take her correction in stride and she can see him nod from the corner of her eye. “I just uh…” he sighs, looks upward the increasing dusk sky, “with the day and all I wanted to…” he kicks the tire of his Jeep softly, “ya know. Give You something fun.”

She can feel the horror dawn across her face as she falls into a very odd stasis. 

Oh.

Oh god. 

The second Sunday. May 10th. 1998. Mother’s Day.

Her first Mother’s Day.

She hadn’t even thought. 

“Mulder?” She wants to hate herself for the tremor in her voice. She can’t though. By his blank face he’s clearly anticipated this reaction. 

“30 ought and revolver. Mangos and beer,” she asks. “What’s the arm chair and the pump action for?”

“For when you realized what day it was,” he continues to talk away from her, continues to avoid her eyes.“And so you can just blow something the fuck up.”

Silent, he unloads the arm chair and she loads the shotgun.

“There’s a bonus,” he whispers in her ear, passed the foam earplugs she’s wearing, as she draws down and chambers a round with the smooth pump-action sound recognized by criminals around the world as the instant sound of death coming for them. 

Mulder smiles, and he’s lost all of that adorableness he’s maintained throughout the day. This is his jackal-grin. The smile of a fox finding an unattended nest of eggs. In this moment, she recognizes what they are, and they are not prey

Together, they are predators.

“What’s the bonus?” Scully asks.

“I found that old armchair on a corner down the block from Old Smokey’s old apartment. It’s got cigarette burns.”

She bursts out in a laugh and he echoes. They laugh and laugh and she shoots and shoots and when they’re done they toss a match and light the fucking thing on fire. 

And after a day of shooting, six beers a piece between them, and five years of clawing and fighting and surviving, there on that Virginia country-side Mulder makes her a promise. 

“Someday,” he sways, slinging his arm around her shoulder as they eat the acrid smoke, “I know you gave me shit about that house in Home, but someday I’m gonna build us a place like that. Away from it all. Right here, in fuckin’ Farr’s Corner. And no one is ever gonna fuckin’ hurt you again.”

Scully believes him. Fully in that moment. “Us?” she decides to ask.

Even buzzed, the gravitas cuts through. He smiles and gives her a tiny little shake of her shoulders. “Well, yeah. I’m gonna live in the shed.”

They fall asleep in the back of his Jeep and for the first time since her remission, Scully takes a minute. "Us,“ she hears him say. 

And for the first time since her remission, Dana Scully allows herself to believe.


	6. The Fatal Funnel

A week after Mother’s Day, and the ground Scully thought they’d gained back in their partnership is called into question. A little boy reading minds, corroborating the niggle of dread growing in the pit of her stomach. An entire patch of Mulder’s past returns; intelligent, clearly on the prowl for foxes, and towering over Dana in her own three-inch heels.

Scully spends the case caught in her own emotional and churning surf, alternating between scientific curiosity and professional frustration. She thought she’d proven herself on the X-files and starts to think maybe she’s wrong about that. She thought she knew Mulder better than everyone and now that, too, is cast into doubt.

And what’s most troublesome about the entire thing to her is there’s another emotion she never anticipated that crashes over her like the messiest of breakers, pulling her into the undertow and violently beating her along the rocks. She experiences pure and unchecked jealously in a wash so full of rage it terrifies her. 

By the conclusion of the case, her jealousy isn’t the only thing that burns. Shame does, too. At feeling a modicum of relief at a woman being shot. 

And in the end, it’s not the only thing that goes up in flames. 

Scully tries to hold him fast, keep him tethered amidst the swell.

Reassignment comes with only one breath of relief – Counterterrorism and on occasional loan to Gangs as a force-multiplier but they will stay partners. 

The reassignment does mean they are ramped up in training. While A.D. Skinner is well-aware of how they operate in the field, Scully is sure he’s also aware of how loose and fast they are with things like reasonable suspicion and probable cause. How quick they can be to kick down doors or disobey direct orders when one or the other’s ass is on the line. 

In both divisions, they will be attached to the field office vice the Hoover, and that means they will be going on tactical raids. The agents are on a short leash, and they need to adhere to nothing but strictest procedures from here out if they even stand a chance of getting the X-files back when the office is rebuilt.

So, Skinner makes them train. A lot. They go back to the mat rooms to re-solidify the proper handcuffing techniques, the proper stuns and punches. The kinds of things that are drilled in to most agents in the field. 

And twice a week, the Agents dress out in black with modular vests, thigh holsters for their Sigs, and MP5s and head to the simulation range. 

It’s not quite like working with HRT, but it’s damn close.

Today, they’re focused on a breach and clear scenario. There will be an unknown number of suspects, all potentially armed. 

The lead Agent, Lanier, was a generally affable man with warm umbra skin who towered over most of them, built like a linebacker. He began the pre-mission brief. 

“Alright boys,” he cuts a glance Scully’s way, “Sorry about that Scully-”

She smiles at him and shrugs. “It happens.”

He nods and clears his throat, “Today we’re clearing building A. What are some things that come to mind when you take a first look?”

Another Agent from Gangs answers first, “Three floors, fire escape in the back heading all the way down, no back entrance…” he trails off and one of the men in the front of the group picks up, “Only one door, so plenty of chances to get caught in a-”

“It happens,” Mulder leans down and mimes in her ear, teasing twinkle in his eye.

Scully smiles and nudges him with her shoulder. “I like Lanier,” she murmurs. 

If nothing else, the fact that they’re still out in the field and not stuck behind desks has seemed to bolster Mulder’s spirit in the wake of the fire. With Fowley in the hospital and long nights shared trying to piece the X-files back together, things have been decent. 

Getting better, at least. They’re starting to tease each other again and she’s starting to wonder if she imagined everything that happened during the Gibson Praise case. As usual, they’ve avoided talking about much of anything that really matters. 

“Scully, that man outweighs you by about 200 pounds. He’d crush you in the sack.”

She shoves him harder. “Mulder!” she hisses, but she’s trapping back a giggle. 

“Agents!” Lanier’s friendly tone has quickly been superseded. The man gives them a hard look. “You wanna stop playing grab ass back there and actually listen up?”

Chagrined, they straighten.

“Alright. Get locked and loaded, range is officially hot starting now,” Lanier calls out and red lights lining the fence around the shoot house compound light up. “Get in, get out. Use best judgement for use of force. Don’t make assumptions. And don’t get each other killed.”

She sees Mulder roll his eyes. He loves being in the field, but he is not about the ooh-rah shit.

As the agents line up together in their initial stack, six deep, Scully’s heart starts to pound. There’s a little fact Mulder likes to tease her about – Dana Scully is absolutely all about the ooh-rah shit.

Being the shortest, she’s up in front, and the agents crouch against the wall next to building’s only ground-floor door. Mulder, stacked in the very back, decides to try and play by the book for once, and using proper procedure, squeezes the shoulder of the agent in front. The shoulder squeezes make it up to Scully who nods, and leans out a hand, testing the door knob.

It twists. Unlocked.

Scully throws the door open, “FBI, come out with your hands up or you may be shot!”

The building is pitch black inside, having no exterior windows until the third floor. Scully draws her flashlight from her rigger’s belt and tries to get a visual down the hall, which looks clear. She turns her head to whisper to the agent directly behind her – a wiry guy named Martinez.

“Looks clear left, I can’t see what’s right. I’m gonna button-hook the right side.” 

He nods. It’s on her, now. She waits for the other agents to get flashlights in hand, Martinez turning his on. Then, like a well-oiled machine, they begin their initial breach, Scully swinging quickly through and around the door and Martinez crossing behind her to the other side.

The adrenaline was for naught. The first floor is empty. They stack up on the only stairway and continue to press on.

They move as such, clearing rooms, leaving agents behind to secure their backs, and moving on up. Eventually, with no suspects found, the only place left is a closed door on the third floor. Mulder and Scully are the only Agents not occupied with holding gained ground and ensuring it stays clear.

Scully has a very odd feeling that this was by design, with Lanier lining them up in the stack in this specific order. 

Mulder grins at her and waggles his eyebrows, “Just like old times, eh Scully?” His hair is flat and he’s sweating so heavily it’s dripping down his face.

“Mulder,” she cautions, her voice low. “I think this is a test… I think we need to-”

He rolls his eyes at her. “It’s hotter than hell, Scully. Let’s wrap this up and get the fuck out of here. C’mon, on me.”

Scully doesn’t have time to stop him before he moves around the door and with that characteristic snap of his hips, lands a direct and powerful kick just about the knob of the door, snapping the older and rotting wooden frame.

“Mulder!” she calls out right as gunfire erupts. 

“Shit!” Mulder calls out and it’s chaos inside, with flashing muzzles and the characteristic pop of automatic rifle fire. The black of Mulder’s clothes is lit up with paint-marker from the simulation rounds, but he pushes in anyway, taking out two men but slowing Scully’s progress through the doorway.

Once she’s finally in, she instantly takes the opposite corner of the room, taking two more men, but not before she takes seven or eight shots herself. 

They come to the middle of the room and they’re breathing in heavy tandem.

“Shit!” Mulder gasps, clapping her on the shoulder for a moment, before reaching up to sweep her matted hair behind her ear. “You alright?”

She can feel her eyes bugging out behind her safety glasses. “Alright? God dammit, Mulder! What did I tell you out there? I fucking told you this was gonna be a test, I would have fucking told you to play this by the book if you’d given me have a chance, and-”

She’s cut off and startled as the door slams shut. Their heads whip over to find Agent Lanier, his own rifle pointed at the ground and not a speck of paint marker on him.

“That’s enough.” He doesn’t yell but the deadly quiet of his voice speaks volumes.

“Where-” Mulder starts and his quickly cut off. 

“Behind the door, Agent. You didn’t check behind the fucking door.”

Scully grunts in frustration and rolls her eyes heavenward as the larger man stalks towards her partner. Whatever is coming isn’t going to be good.

“I don’t like you, Agent Mulder. Most people don’t, from what I hear, but my reasons are different because you see, I’ve heard about your work and I respect it. And your partner works her ass off, no matter what division she’s in.” Lanier comes to rest and five inches from Mulder, it’s the first time Scully has ever seen her partner look small.

“Listen, and I’m going to say this once. You fuck up here, and you are off my squad. You fuck up again, and you are off my squad. But you fuck up like this out there?” Lanier cuts a glance at Scully, then back Mulder’s way, “and you are going to get her and any number of my men killed, you understand?”

Mulder clenches his jaw and narrows his eyes, but for once, what follows isn’t that sneer of condescension. “Understood.”

Lanier nods. “Get out of here. Get cleaned up. Those sim rounds hurt like a bitch and sometimes they break the skin, especially the 5.56. You’re probably gonna need to get patched up.”

Later, beaten and broken but at least showered, they retreat to Mulder’s apartment as usual.

Scully’s anger at him hasn’t cooled. She comes from his kitchen with a bottle of Rolling Rock and hisses as she sits. 

He looks at her, properly contrite. “Not as young as we used to be, huh?”

She takes a sip. “Yeah well, I don’t remember being lit up with sim rounds quite this badly at the Academy.”

He winces. “I’m sorry.”

Scully sighs. “I know, Mulder. You always are.”

He’s up and off the couch and Scully should have known that would be a trigger for him because Mulder is always ready to snap when he’s hurt her. He doesn’t repair relationships, she’s come to find. He just continues to sabotage them, lashing out at people that just want to help.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Forget it about it, Mulder, let’s just get back to work,” she takes another drink of beer, trying to stay calm, to gentle him. 

“No, you know what Scully, you’ve been saying shit like that all summer and you act like your teasing but clearly I’ve done something wrong here. Wanna let me in on it so we can move passed this? Because it’s obviously affecting the way we work together and we’re getting careless-”

That’s it. She’s pissed. “We’re getting careless, Mulder? We?” She stands and they circle his coffee table like wolves. 

“What are we even doing this for?” she raises her arms, looking at the mess of burnt paperwork laying in tatters around them. “Why? Why even bother if you’re just gonna piss it away?”

Mulder holds a finger up, his eyes burning into hers and voice gone gravel with rage. “I am working my ass off here, Scully. Don’t think for one damn second that I’m pissing it away.”

She sighs and closes her eyes, her anger flooding out of her as quickly as it came on. “Just… we’re not even close to getting the files back. I haven’t been down to the morgue in months. No social life to speak of. I’m just asking you, just for the next few months Mulder… please try to follow the rules? The procedures? This isn’t wire-tapping. At least we’re still out there. Can’t you just do what they’re asking of you, for once?”

He’s standing back away from her with his hands on his hips and eyebrows sky high in confusion, mouth gaping at her like one of his mollies. And as usual, Mulder complete misses her point. “No… no social life? Scu-… What are you… you’re here, aren’t you? Drinking beers, hanging out with a friend – isn’t that what a social life is?”

“Oh, Mulder,” she laughs in exhausted and humorless exasperation. And because the wounds from their last case on the X-files have yet to heal, and maybe because she’s had a couple of beers, or maybe because she spent the afternoon mopping up blood from her battered body again because of something her partner got her into, she let’s her temper rip. “No wonder Fowley left for Europe.”

Mulder goes deadly quiet and she can practically smell his rage. She’s already pissed at herself, to be honest. They have never intentionally set out to hurt each other. And she’s already about to apologize before he cuts her right back. And because he’s Mulder and because he’s always somehow known exactly how to profile people except apparently when it comes to his own relationships, his shot lands true.

“That’s what this’s about, Scully? Diana? Well let me just remind you,” he moves in, gets in her space the way that he does, “you’ve got a jealous streak a mile wide, Scully, but the second it starts to interfere with the work-” he cuts himself off and steps back, and she can see he’s a little horrified. 

Jesus. What the fuck is happening to them?

After minutes of mutually stunned silence, Scully clears her throat. “I’m gonna go home, Mulder. We’ve both drawn blood tonight, literally and figuratively.”

He closes his eyes and nods. Stays like that as she moves through his door, letting it swing closed behind her.

As she’s walking towards his elevator, she hears the doorknob turn, but she doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t come after her.

Four weeks later, in a fit of disregarding procedure, thousands of lives are saved when a building is blown to the ground. The next time she leaves his apartment like that, he does come after her. And two days after, while they lay battered on the Antarctic ice, he once again manages to prove that he’s worth it for every time that she’s stayed by his side.


	7. Where I'm Bound

Mulder doesn’t know how he ends up at the little Baptist church. 

One swampy Sunday in April, he starts walking from the Hoover, scouring through the National Mall, and heads down along the waterfront trying not to be put off by the strong and brackish scent of the shifting tide. He crosses the Anacostia and looking back over his shoulder, catches sight of the Washington Naval Yard. 

Wonders if Bill Scully Sr. were still alive, would Dana have taken him on a tour there? Would she have reveled in girlish pride as every enlisted man and most officers on the site saluted him? If Billy Scully Sr. were still alive, would Dana even still be working the X-Files? After everything? After being gut shot?

Likely not. 

Mulder guesses that at some point, Dana would have caved to her father. Gone to be a doctor. Gone to marry a wholesome Catholic man – surgeon or accountant or lawyer – and adopted four kids and a dog. 

Gone to leave his sorry ass with his sorry files.

Mulder’s weekends have been less full of shadowy informants and in the wake of El Rico, conspiracies have been hard to find. Diana’s body wasn’t in that warehouse and while she’s been missing in action, he can’t bring himself to care. 

And Scully… well the last time they spent any truly personal time together, he’d almost told her that if she let her own jealousy get in the way of the work, she could get lost. Since then, and especially since the OPR hearing where she backed off from what happened in Antarctica and the case where he’d backed off from his hallway confession, their partnership has entered its own deep freeze. 

Hell… in Arcadia, she couldn’t get far enough away from him in that house. Every time he touched her, it was like holding a cat over a kitchen sink full of water. 

He knows they’re broken. He knows he’s very likely the one that broke them. And like a little kid, frustrated at a shattered toy, instead of figuring out how to put it back together he’s managed to stomp his feet, pout, and break them even further.

As such, Mulder’s weekends have been very, very lonely.

The search for Samantha has run stale, even more than usual. The trail long cold, since 1973 in fact and he’s just now realizing that he’s been too god damned blind to see it. 

Scully had asked him if he ever got tired, just wanted to get out of the car and live something approaching a normal life. 

The truth is, Mulder has no idea what a normal life looks like. 

To him, a normal life had started looking a lot like hanging out with Scully, drinking beers and pouring over casefiles at his apartment. He hadn’t been purposefully snarky when he referenced those days putting the X-files back together as a social life. 

For him, it had been.

“You look like you could use a little God, baby.”

Mulder’s jolted out of his thoughts, standing there in front of that church, by a lady whose voice has a southern lilt, warm honey that’s somehow soothing considering the hot, muggy day. She smiles at him and it lights up her eyes, genuine.

“I… I don’t believe in God,” he mutters and thinks, for fuck’s sake, Fox. You can’t even let a woman be nice to you without being a fucking dick.

She tosses her head back and laughs and laughs at him. Until there are tears in her eyes and he’s blushing like a damn school boy. This woman feels like she has wisdom for generations, well beyond his own earthly bounds. 

“You got some balls on you, doncha boy? Standin’ in front of a Baptist church in D.C. tellin’ an old lady like me that you don’t believe in God.” She pats his shoulder and slides her hand down into his, tugging him up the steps. “C’mon honey, you don’t gotta believe in God to get something out of church. You just gotta believe.”

As she pulls him through the doors, Mulder realizes that’s the problem. He doesn’t know what he believes in anymore. 

It’s obvious the second the doors burst open that he’s completely out of place. There’s a choir up along the stage on risers, a woman in front humming a tune as a few of the members clap and sway behind her.

It should be a record screeching moment, but as the older woman guides him up through the pews, all the people in the rows they pass simply glance at him, smile and nod. He finds himself doing the same. 

The choir breaks into song, “Come and go with me to that land, come and go with me to that land…”

It’s the most beautiful sound Mulder’s heard in a very, very long time, the sounds of the Gospel enough to break through the dull roar between his ears of space ships, aliens, and conspiracies… enough to cut through it all.

It’s surreal. He feels underwater, almost out of breath, but as the song winds down and the congregation take their seats, in the midst of blind acceptance, Mulder discovers it’s true: church isn’t necessarily about God, and God isn’t necessarily about belief, but what it all might be about in the end is faith.

And in whom you put that faith.

He stumbles back to his car in the parking garage of the Hoover afterwards, and like a shattered disciple who realizes how wrong he’s been the entire time, he breaks down and cries.

—–

The crack of the gun fire is enough to send birds flying and Mulder nearly jumps out of his skin as a squirrel darts up the bark of the tree he’s propped against.

He’s been quiet and thinks he’s managed to sneak up close enough to see her without her noticing him.

The bullet pings off one of the steel targets she has set up. 

Mulder had noticed several weeks ago that Scully had been knocking off work early on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He even figured out what she was probably up to, mostly because as her supervisor, he was still responsible for signing off on her range recertifications. While Scully was almost always near perfect, on the last qualifying sheet the range master had written, “Super-human shot grouping.” 

Despite being the best of two shooters on the X-files squad, Scully was now among the best in the FBI and it was being noticed.

Mulder camped out on the FBI range a couple of afternoons before realizing that she wasn’t shooting at the Hoover. Or anywhere near. 

So, on this particular afternoon when she clocks out, he tails her.

All the way to Farr’s Corner.

On the very same ground they blew the shit out of an armchair over a year ago, Scully has set up quite a sophisticated range.

There are a few steel-plated target trees that ping every time she pulls the trigger. A couple of steel cowboys. A hostage target, with a rotating plate fixed over the shoulder. 

Every time she draws down on that one, a bullet pings the plate and the target flips over to the other shoulder. 

Jesus, he thinks. She should be on HRT, not on the fucking X-files with his useless fucking ass. 

It’s poetry, watching her shoot. He can practically hear her in his head, chanting front sight, feeling the smooth trigger-pull, focus narrowing down the same way a cobra goes in for the kill. The smooth consistency of it lulls him and in his head, Mulder’s right back in that Baptist church.

Come and go with me to that land…

Ping!

Come and go with me to that land…

Ping! Another steel plate flips over.

Come and go with me to that land…

Ping! She’s shooting perfect. One hundred percent.

Where I’m bound, where I’m bound…

Ping! Instead of shooting the plate over the hostage target’s shoulder, she’s nailed the actual target itself right in the forehead.

Mulder winces, recognizing she likely did that on purpose. 

She’s on empty, and with the slide racked back, moves to dump the magazine. With the assurance that she won’t turn and shoot him, Mulder makes his move to alert her to his presence, pushing off the tree.

“I hope that last shot wasn’t meant for me.”

She doesn’t jump, just drops her head and sighs as she holsters her weapon. She must have known he was there the entire time.

“Of course, it wasn’t,” she mumbles, pushing her earmuffs from her ears down around her neck, and pushing her eye protection up off her face and into her hair. “You followed me.”

Stopping to stand in front of her, Mulder shrugs. “Of course, I did.” 

He sees her roll her shoulders out, exhausted and resigned and thinks, this is because of you, you asshole. You do this to her.

He’s spent the passed eight months truly fucking up. Completely unable to set things right. Forward two steps and back ten from that moment in his hallway and his heart still clenches when he thinks about it.

“Mulder-”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts her, impulsive and unsteady.

Scully frowns up at him. “What?”

“I’m sorry.” Mulder really hasn’t thought further ahead than that, and he bites his lip and looks away. 

“What for?”

He shrugs a shoulder and they stay like that, the silence heavy and awkward, for minutes. He can hear his watch tick. Can hear her breathe. Can hear his heart beat.

She moves around so he’s staring back at her, forcing him to make eye contact. “You’re not the target, Mulder. You never have been. Not with me.”

“Maybe I wanna be the target,” he mutters. “Maybe I should be.”

“Mulder-”

He takes a breath and breaches the conversation again, “I’m sorry I accused you of making it personal, Scully. I…” he scuffs his shoe along the dirt between them. Thinks back to the church. Thinks of the older lady, telling him to there are bigger things to believe in. 

And decides its time. It’s time to start over.

“Your sister,” he holds up a finger. “Emily.” Holds up a second and she closes her eyes. “Your health, your friends,” continues to tick off his fingers. Finally holds up his thumb, open handed. “You.”

She opens her eyes and he’s lost, awash in her cyaneous gaze. 

“As always, Scully,” Mulder pushes ahead, “you were right. It’s very, very personal.”

Weapon holstered, she steps into him then and wraps her arms around his waist. It takes Mulder a quick second, surprised, before he returns the embrace. 

He’s taken back to that very first night, back to mosquito bites and candlelight. Back to when his first reaction to her was that she was the first person to bother touching him in years. Back to when he decided she would be the first person in years he would tell the truth to.

Mulder rests his chin atop her head and they sway a little. The dread that’s set up shop, ulcer-like in his belly starts to unwind itself. He almost lost this, he thinks, as he drops his cheek to the part of her hair and nuzzles in. 

He feels her chest and back expand as she takes in a breath, and then she steps back, catches his eye and holds up one finger. “You,” she repeats, and Mulder has to close his eyes now or he knows he’s going to cry.

Him. 

He’s been a victim, too.

Opens them again when he feels her hand on his cheek. 

“It’s very, very personal, Mulder,” she echoes him and leaves him with a final warning: “And the next time you throw that at me like an insult, I’m done.”

The crunch of the leaves and twigs under her boots echoes in his brain for days. He doesn’t turn. And he doesn’t follow.

But three weeks later, after spending another weekend at church – this time worshiping at the altar of home plate and Louisville Slugger, he executes a plan. 

“H-hey, Scully, it’s me, uh M-” he pauses, “Uh, Fox-” he winces and tries to recover, “F-fox Mantle. We met the other day over box scores and um, really shitty ice cream… Anyway uh, I heard your birthday was coming up and well… I got you a present. Consider it early or late. Or… whatever. Just, if you’re so inclined, I’ll uh, I’ll be at Barcroft Park at seven tonight, and you can come to collect if you want.” He’s quiet for several seconds. “I very much hope to see you later… Bye.”

He realizes it might be the very first time he’s ever ended a conversation with her with the word ‘Bye.’

On his way out the door, he grabs his baseball bat.


	8. Vengence

His mother is dead.

Things weigh on him differently than ever before. His mother is dead, and she couldn’t even see passed herself enough to realize he’d have “issues” if she went and fucking killed herself. 

He’s been on the other side of the gun. He knows.

He could have pulled the trigger but for fuck’s sake he didn’t. They’ve been through the same shit and how fucking dare she?

Mulder never pulled the trigger on himself because even if Scully died, if he lost her to cancer, there was still one person left in the whole fucking world that gave a little bit of a shit about him. And one in outer-space. 

Allegedly.

And now they’re both fucking gone.

Allegedly. 

Fucking walk-ins. 

Scully’s hand of justice is harsh and swift, different from his mother’s, thankfully. Mulder would worry about trying to channel Freud if it was the same. 

She heads back to Washington. 

Away from his nonsense. But the results remain.

His sister is dead.

Samantha wrote in a little journal and she suffered insurmountable crimes and pain, and she remembered her older brother, with brown hair who used to tease her. She wishes she could remember his name.

At least there’s one person who wishes that.

He’s fine. He’s free.

Mulder feels the itch on his trigger finger that night, alone on his motel bed. He asked Scully to stay in her room. Because he really, really doesn’t want her to be part of the next hour of his life. Two hours.

She is.

The door creaks open and he doesn’t even turn, sweating and panting like a turned-out pig on his mattress.

“Mulder,” she says.

“Scully,” he echoes, but it’s in a treble wobble and god dammit he hates when she sees him cry. He curls over on himself like a dog tucking its tail. She shifts around him regardless, and in the morning, the smell of her from the shower, the soft light coming from the bathroom, the knowledge that someone cared enough to stay… hell… the burned-out smell of her hair from the hotel room blow-dryer.

It forces him awake and up and safe and without pulling the trigger.

He’s fine. He’s free. 

And then it’s the next day and they’re hurtling forward back to the airport. To the East Coast. Home and away from all this shit. 

And hopefully, on to something bigger. 

At the airport baggage claim, he holds Scully’s hand. 

Why the hell not? 

He doesn’t care about judges of his life anyway but who’s left to care? He didn’t give up his quest; everyone just up and died on him. No one left to judge.

Skinner, maybe. But he’s pretty sure Skinner caught on to their deal when Scully opened his door with bed-rumpled hair. They’ve been sleeping together more than a time or two since Kansas.

It’s been… friendly. But do friends really sleep on the same bed? And do friends really not care when their friend’s erection is sliding up the notches of their back? Or their nipples are hard as hell and pressed into their buddy’s spinal column?

Mulder might be the village idiot at times but he’s also a savant. They’re sleeping together and soon it’s going to be sleeping together.

He hopes.

He’s sure.

He’s fine. He’s free.

He wakes up and it’s like every other day. He heads to the fucking coffee shop by 935 and she’s there. With her damn espresso and already buying his coffee.

Except today, Neil Jefferies is there as well. And Neil is pretty pissed off at the last Sunday Mass because the last Sunday Mass called him a Liar.

Mulder sees it before it happens, but he can’t stop it. The sunflower seeds drop.

“Drop the God Damn lottery ticket and open the fucking register.”

The cashier doesn’t even get to the 911 button. “Sir-“

There is a rack of the shotgun, and the argument is done. “Open. The. Register.”

Scully is a pit bull. Much to Mulder’s chagrin. And she charges. “FBI, hands up or-“

“Scully…”

Neil has the gun on her. “Saw your hip holster, bitch. Drop it.”

She draws. She’s picked up a thing or two from her profiling partner and it’s made her over-confident at times. “Okay, okay. This is a bad situation. I get it. I agree. What can I do?”

Neil slaps his slide-lock forward, ensuring a round is racked and chambered. 

This guy is determined to shoot, his finger twitching on the trigger, and all Mulder can think is, “Fucking FIRE, Scully. Put a bullet in him.” 

But it’s also in vicinity of the case of Donnie Pfaster. And now, just for a second, he sees his partner hesitate on pulling the trigger.

Neil carries on.

“It’s not a bad situation, bitch. It’s pretty fucking simple. You’re not going to shoot me unless I shoot at you, right? So, here’s the deal. I’m going to take four hundred and forty-five dollars from this fucking gas station. I’m going to pay to fucking cremate my mother,” Mulder grinds his teeth, “And then I’m going to live for myself and try not to fuck up again. Or.” Neil glances at Mulder, then back at Scully, who swallows when he shifts focus. 

He smiles.

“Or,” he shifts his weapon over, landing squarely on Mulder, “I’m gonna shoot this little pretty boy of yours and-“ his finger twitches on the trigger again and Scully lays into him. Two rounds, gun down, perfect, life-preserving shots. 

Just a typical day. 

That night, he starts, “Scully?” It’s a new night, They’ve made dinner. They’ve hung out. “You woulda shot that guy anyway, right? The guy in the coffee shop?”

“Yeah,” It’s the second time he asked, and now, half asleep, she absently licks pasta sauce off her thumb.

He steps around the argument. One more time.

A day later he’ desperate.

“Sagan says we live on in carbon, right, Scully?” he asks,voice rough from sleep. They’d passed out on her bed.

The way she looks at him. God, the way she looks at him.

She takes a deep breath and his cock twitches up against her inhaling belly.

Front to front is new for them. 

“Sagan says we continue. In any life. We um…” Mulder slides a furry thigh over hers, chances a little suckle on her neck. “We turn into carbon, Mulder, and we-“ he sloughs his fingers along her jaw and down the middle line of her chest, “we come together. One way or another. We uh- ah… Jesus.”

He smiles when his fingers come away soaked. “Your priest would be proud.” Brave, he dumps his boxers for the first time ever. She takes care of her panties and he slides himself up between her as they lay on their sides. He starts with short, irritating, tentative, delicious little thrusts.

“Proud’s not the proper… descriptive,” she counters.

It’s them. It’s partnership. It’s give and take. It’s-

He stops.

Fists a hand in the back of her hair and gets even harder inside her at the sound of her gasp.

“Scully.”

“Mulder.”

He jerks her head back and pounds her. Hard. A sharp pop of his hips. “You do not ever…” a pop of his hips, “hesitate on drawing down again; get it?”

In her moment of ecstasy, she agrees.

Afterwards, with him curled around her like a comma, Mulder grows a set of balls and commands. “You. Are not at fault for Donnie Pfaster. And that fucker deserved to die. And if you ever fucking question pulling the trigger again when someone is on you… Fuck, Scully, don’t. It’s not for you. You get that?” and he nips at her. Pops her hips with their newfound truce. “It’s for me.”

She re-qualifies at the range the next week. She shoots Expert. And the month after, she puts Orell Peattie into a hospital bed.


End file.
